During
Professor Jennifer Lu’s10 years working in the nanotechnology industry, she noticed that newly hired grads often couldn’t apply their knowledge or integrate knowledge from different fields to solve real-world problems. She found they needed a broader knowledge base, more hands-on experience and enhanced problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
Now, as a professor in the UC Merced
School of Engineering, Lu has created a way to help meet those needs. She has a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant providing equipment and other support for a nanotechnology course to be taught next fall for upper division science and engineering students.
She’ll be working with professors
Valerie Leppertand Michelle Khine (co-principal investigators) as well as professors
Anne Myers Kelly,
Jian-Qiao Sun,
Christopher Viney, and
Chancellor Steve Kangto build the infrastructure for the class - specifically, a nanofabrication clean room - by May 2008.
“Right now, only a handful of graduate students get to work in this exciting field that will revolutionize the way that we live,” Lu said. “I want to bring nanofabrication into the undergraduate realm, to prepare tomorrow’s workforce for the growing opportunities that will exist in nanotechnology.”
Students in the class will learn what it takes to synthesize carbon nanotubes. Then they’ll make chemical sensors with carbon nanotubes and test them against similar sensors made by industry leaders. After that, they’ll address the problems and limitations of their work and try to broaden its applications and improve its design.
Lu has assembled more than a dozen industry experts to serve on the UC Merced Nanotechology Education Advisory Board, including leaders from Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national labs, IBM, Honeywell, NASA, and the Naval Research Laboratory. They advised and endorsed her proposal, and some will guest lecture for the course.
“They are great role models,” Lu said. “The group includes technology entrepreneurs, mothers in leadership positions and outstanding researchers.”
Lu also hopes that training students in nanotechnology will help retain students in science and engineering, attract more nano researchers to UC Merced and incubate businesses for the Central Valley.
“We use nanotechnology in applications like stain-proof fabrics and sunscreen,” Lu said. “If our research is going to have economic impact on this area, we have to create functional nanomaterials and useful devices.”
“Educating students can be the bridge between science and commercial products,” she said.
